Margaret Mitchell was a Southerner and a lifelong resident and native of Atlanta, Georgia, who was born in 1900 into a wealthy and politically prominent family. Her father, Eugene Muse Mitchell, was an attorney, and her mother, Mary Isabel "May Belle" (or "Maybelle") Stephens, was a suffragist. She had two brothers, Russell Stephens Mitchell, who died in infancy in 1894, and Alexander Stephens Mitchell, born in 1896.^[2][3]
Mitchell's family on her father's side were descendants of Thomas Mitchell, originally of Aberdeenshire, Scotland, who settled in Wilkes County, Georgia in 1777, and served in the American Revolutionary War. Her grandfather, Russell Crawford Mitchell, of Atlanta, enlisted in the Confederate States Army in July 1861, and was later severely wounded at the Battle of Sharpsburg. After the Civil War, he made a large fortune supplying lumber to rapidly building Atlanta. Russell Mitchell had twelve children from two wives; the eldest was Eugene, who graduated from the University of Georgia Law School.^[2][4][5]
Mitchell's maternal great-grandfather, Philip Fitzgerald, emigrated from Ireland, and eventually settled on a slaveholding plantation near Jonesboro, Georgia, where he had one son and seven daughters with his wife, Elenor. Mitchell's grandparents, married in 1863, were Annie Fitzgerald and John Stephens, who had also emigrated from Ireland and was a Captain in the Confederate States Army. John Stephens was a prosperous real estate developer after the Civil War and one of the founders of the Gate City Street Railroad (1881), a mule-drawn Atlanta trolley system. John and Annie Stephens had twelve children together; the seventh child was May Belle Stephens, who married Eugene Mitchell.^[5][6][7] May Belle Stephens had studied at the Bellevue Convent in Quebec and completed her education at the Atlanta Female Institute.^[3]
The Atlanta Constitution reported that May Belle Stephens and Eugene Mitchell were married at her father's mansion on November 8, 1892:

...the maid of honor, Miss Annie Stephens, was as pretty as a French pastel, in a directoire costume of yellow satin with a long coat of green velvet sleeves, and a vest of gold brocade...The bride was a fair vision of youthful loveliness in her robe of exquisite ivory white and satin...her slippers were white satin wrought with pearls...an elegant supper was served. The dining room was decked in white and green, illuminated with numberless candles in silver candlelabras...The bride's gift from her father was an elegant house and lot...At 11 o'clock Mrs. Mitchell donned a pretty going-away gown of green English cloth with its jaunty velvet hat to match and bid goodbye to her friends.^[8]

[edit] Early influences

[edit] Childhood in Atlanta

Margaret Mitchell was born in her grandmother Annie Stephens's house on Cain Street in Atlanta, just around the corner from the Mitchells' home on Jackson Street.^[9] During her early childhood, the Mitchell family lived in a two-story Victorian house on Jackson Hill, east of downtown Atlanta.^[10] Jackson Hill was an old, affluent part of the city.^[9] At the bottom of Jackson Hill was an area of African American homes and businesses called "Darktown".^[10] The mayhem of the Atlanta Race Riot occurred in September 1906 when she was five years old. The sounds of gunshots could be heard throughout the night. At Margaret's suggestion, her father, who did not own a gun, stood guard with a sword.^[11]
The Mitchells moved in 1912 to a two-story white columned frame house on the east side of Peachtree Street just north of Seventeenth Street in Atlanta. Past the nearest neighbor's house was forest and beyond it the Chattahoochee River.^[12] When she was sixteen years old, the Great Atlanta Fire of 1917 destroyed Mitchell's former Jackson Hill home.^[13] Her Peachtree Street home was torn down in 1952.^[14]
Mitchell was raised in an era when children were "seen and not heard". Her mother would swat her with a hairbrush as a form of discipline. When in the company of adults, she was not encouraged to express her personality.^[15] After an incident where her dress caught fire on an iron grate when she was about three, her mother began dressing her in boys' pants, and she was given the nickname "Jimmy" from the comic strip, Little Jimmy.^[16]
One of Mitchell's most vivid memories of her mother was a women's suffrage rally led by Carrie Chapman Catt. Margaret sat on a platform wearing a Votes-for-Women banner blowing kisses to the gentlemen while her mother gave an impassioned speech.^[9][17] Mitchell was nineteen years old when the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified, which gave women the right to vote.
May Belle Mitchell gave her children advice on drinking and sex in a time when such things were "done but not spoken of", recalled Mitchell's brother Stephens. Mitchell's father, who was more judgmental than her mother, offered more criticism than praise, which drove her independence.^[18]

[edit] The South (of her imagination)

While "the South" exists as a geographical region of the United States, it is also said to exist as "a place of the imagination" of writers.^[19] An image of "the South" was fixed in Mitchell's imagination when at six years old her mother took her on a buggy tour through ruined plantations and "Sherman's sentinels",^[20] the brick and stone chimneys that remained after William Tecumseh Sherman's "March and torch" through Georgia.^[21] Mitchell would later recall what her mother had said to her:

She talked about the world those people had lived in, such a secure world, and how it had exploded beneath them. And she told me that my world was going to explode under me, someday, and God help me if I didn't have some weapon to meet the new world.^[20]

From an imagination cultivated in her youth, Margaret Mitchell's defensive weapon would become her writing.^[20]
Mitchell said she heard Civil War stories from her relatives when she was growing up:

On Sunday afternoons when we went calling on the older generation of relatives, those who had been active in the Sixties, I sat on the bony knees of veterans and the fat slippery laps of great aunts and heard them talk.^[22]

On summer vacations, she visited her maternal great-aunts, Mary Ellen ("Mamie") Fitzgerald and Sarah ("Sis") Fitzgerald, who still lived at her great-grandparents' plantation home in Jonesboro.^[23] Mamie (1840–1926) had been twenty-one years old and Sis (1848–1928) thirteen when the Civil War began.^[24]
As a child, she had a pony and went riding with a Confederate veteran and a young lady of "beau-age".^[25] She played on earthen Civil War-era fortifications.^[26]

[edit] Avid reader

Young Margaret read "boys' stories" by G.A. Henty, the Tom Swift series, and the Rover Boys series by Edward Stratemeyer.^[16] Her mother read Mary Johnston's novels to her before she could read. They both wept when reading Johnston's The Long Roll (1911) and Cease Firing (1912).^[27] Between the "scream of shells, the mighty onrush of charges, the grim and grisly aftermath of war", Cease Firing is a romance novel involving the courtship of a Confederate soldier and a Louisiana plantation belle^[28] with Civil War illustrations by N. C. Wyeth. She also read the plays of William Shakespeare, and novels by Charles Dickens and Sir Walter Scott.^[29]
Mitchell's two favorite children's books were by author Edith Nesbit: Five Children and It (1902) and The Phoenix and the Carpet (1904). She kept both on her bookshelf even as an adult and gave them as gifts.^[30]

[edit] Young storyteller

A storyteller from a very young age, the first stories Margaret Mitchell wrote were about her animals, and then she progressed to fairy tales and adventure stories. She created book covers for her stories, bound the tablet paper pages together and added her own artwork. At age eleven she gave a name to her publishing company: "Urchin Publishing Co." Later her stories were written in notebooks.^[31] May Belle Mitchell kept her daughter's stories in white enamel bread boxes and there were several boxes of her stories stored in the Mitchell home by the time she went off to college.^[30]
"Margaret" is a character galloping on a pony in The Little Pioneers, and she is playing "Cowboys and Indians" in When We Were Shipwrecked. ^[32]
'Love and honor' is an early theme in Mitchell's writing, as in The Knight and the Lady (c. 1909), where the "good knight" and the "bad knight" duel with swords for a lady. The theme appears again in The Arrow Brave and the Deer Maiden (c. 1913), where a half-white Indian brave, Jack, must withstand the pain inflicted upon him to uphold his honor and ultimately win the girl.^[33] It also appears in Lost Laysen, the novella Mitchell wrote as a teenager in 1916,^[34] and in Mitchell's last known novel, Gone with the Wind, which she began writing in 1926.^[35]
In her pre-teens, Mitchell began writing stories set in foreign locations such as, The Greaser (1913), a cowboy story set in Mexico.^[36] In 1913 she also wrote two American Civil War stories, one of them annotated, "237 pages are in this book".^[37]

[edit] School years

While the Great War carried on in Europe (1914–1918), Margaret Mitchell attended Atlanta's Washington Seminary (now The Westminster Schools), a "fashionable" private girls' school with an enrollment of over 300 students.^[38][39] She was very active in the Drama Club.^[40] Mitchell played the male characters: Nick Bottom in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream and Launcelot Gobbo in Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, among others. She wrote a play about snobbish college girls that she acted in as well.^[41] She also joined the Literary Club and had two stories published in the yearbook: Little Sister and Sergeant Terry.^[42] Ten-year-old "Peggy" is the heroine in Little Sister. She hears her older sister being raped and shoots the rapist:^[43]

Coldly, dispassionately she viewed him, the chill steel of the gun giving her confidence. She must not miss now—she would not miss—and she did not.^[44]

Mitchell received encouragement from her English teacher, Mrs. Paisley, who recognized her writing talent.^[45] A demanding teacher, Paisley told her she had ability if she worked hard and would not be careless in constructing sentences. A sentence, she said, must be "complete, concise and coherent".^[46]
Mitchell read the books of Thomas Dixon, Jr., and in 1916, when the silent film, The Birth of a Nation, was showing in Atlanta, she dramatized Dixon's The Traitor: A Story of the Fall of the Invisible Empire (1907).^{[47][48][49][50]} As both playwright and actress, she took the role of Steve Hoyle.^[51] For the production, she made a Ku Klux Klan costume from a white crepe dress and wore a boy's wig.^[52] (Note: Dixon rewrote The Traitor as The Black Hood (1924) and Steve Hoyle was renamed George Wilkes.)^[53][54]
During her years at Washington Seminary, Mitchell's brother, Stephens, was away studying at Harvard College (1915–1917), and he left in May 1917 to enlist in the army, about a month after the U.S. declared war on Germany. He set sail for France in April 1918, participated in engagements in the Lagny and Marbache sectors, then returned to Georgia in October as a training instructor.^[55]
Stephens Mitchell thought college was the "ruination of girls".^[56] However, May Belle Mitchell placed a high value on education for women and she wanted her daughter's future accomplishments to come from using her mind. She saw education as Margaret's weapon and "the key to survival".^[3][20] The classical college education she desired for her daughter was one that was on par with men's colleges, and this type of education was available only at northern schools. Her mother chose Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts for Margaret because she considered it to be the best women's college in the United States.^[57]
As Mitchell was about to graduate from the Washington Seminary in 1918, she met and fell in love with another Harvard student, a young army lieutenant, Clifford West Henry,^[58] who was chief bayonet instructor at Camp Gordon from May 10 until the time he set sail for France on July 17.^[59] Henry was "slightly effeminate" with "homosexual tendencies", according to biographer Anne Edwards. He was well-read, knew poetry, and he could quote Shakespeare.^[60] But there was no physical passion in his relationship with Mitchell, and she thought that Henry reverenced her.^[61] However, he gave Mitchell an engagement ring.^[62]
On September 14, while she was enrolled at Smith College, Henry was mortally wounded in action in France and died on October 17.^[59][63] As Henry waited in the Verdun trenches, shortly before being wounded, he composed a poem on a leaf torn from his field notebook, found later among his effects. The last stanza of Lieutenant Clifford W. Henry's poem follows:

If "out of luck" at duty's call

In glorious action I should fall

At God's behest,

May those I hold most dear and best

Know I have stood the acid test

Should I "go West."^[64]

Henry repeatedly advanced in front of the platoon he commanded, drawing machine-gun fire so that the German nests could be located and wiped out by his men. Although wounded in the leg in this effort, his death was the result of shrapnel wounds from an air bomb dropped by a German plane.^[65] He was awarded the French Croix de guerre avec palme for his acts of heroism. From the President of the United States, the Commander in Chief of the United States Armed Forces, he was presented with the Distinguished Service Cross and an Oak Leaf Cluster in lieu of a second Distinguished Service Cross.^[59][66]
Mitchell had vague aspirations of a career in psychiatry,^[67] but her future was derailed by an event that killed over fifty million people worldwide, the 1918 flu pandemic. On January 25, 1919, her mother, May Belle Mitchell, succumbed to pneumonia from the "Spanish flu".^[68] Mitchell arrived home from college a day after her mother had passed away. Knowing her death was imminent, May Belle Mitchell wrote her daughter a brief letter and advised her:

Give of yourself with both hands and overflowing heart, but give only the excess after you have lived your own life.^[67]

An average student at Smith College, Mitchell did not excel in any area of academics. She held a low estimation of her writing abilities. Even though her English professor had praised her work, she felt the praise was undue.^[69] After finishing her freshman year at Smith, Mitchell returned to Atlanta to take over the household for her father and never returned to college.^[67] In October 1919, while regaining her strength after an appendectomy, she confided to a friend that giving up college and her dreams of a "journalistic career" to keep house and take her mother's place in society meant "giving up all the worthwhile things that counted for—nothing!"^[70]

[edit] Marriage

Margaret began using the name "Peggy" at Washington Seminary, and the abbreviated form "Peg" at Smith College when she found an icon for herself in the mythological winged horse, "Pegasus", that inspires poets.^[71][72] Peggy made her Atlanta society debut in the 1920 winter season.^[72] In the "gin and jazz style" of the times, she did her "flapping" in the 1920s.^[73] At a 1921 Atlanta debutante charity ball, she performed an Apache dance. The dance included a kiss with her male partner that shocked Atlanta "high society".^[74] The Apache and the Tango were scandalous dances for their elements of eroticism, the latter popularized in a 1921 silent film, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, that made its lead actor, Rudolph Valentino, a sex symbol for his ability to Tango.^[75][76]
Mitchell was, in her own words, an "unscrupulous flirt". She found herself engaged to five men, but maintained that she neither lied to or misled any of them.^[77] A local gossip columnist, who wrote under the name Polly Peachtree, described Mitchell's love life in a 1922 column:

...she has in her brief life, perhaps, had more men really, truly 'dead in love' with her, more honest-to-goodness suitors than almost any other girl in Atlanta.^[73]

In April 1922, Mitchell was seeing two men almost daily; one was Berrien “Red” Upshaw, whom she is thought to have met in 1917 at a dance hosted by the parents of one of her friends, and the other, Upshaw's roommate and friend, John R. Marsh, a copy editor from Kentucky who worked for the Associated Press.^[78][79] Upshaw was an Atlanta boy, a few months younger than Mitchell, whose family moved to Raleigh, North Carolina in 1916.^[80] He had attended the United States Naval Academy, but had been tossed out twice, and was enrolled at the University of Georgia between time at the Academy. Unsuccessful in his educational pursuits and with no job, in 1922 Upshaw earned money by bootlegging alcohol out of the Georgia mountains.^[81]
Although her family disapproved, Peggy and Red married on September 2, 1922, and the best-man at their wedding was John Marsh, who would become her second husband. The couple resided at the Mitchell home with her father. By December the marriage to Upshaw had dissolved and he left. Mitchell suffered physical and emotional abuse, the result of Upshaw's alcoholism and violent temper. Upshaw agreed to an uncontested divorce after John Marsh gave him a loan and Mitchell agreed not to press assault charges against him.^[82][29][78] Upshaw and Mitchell were divorced on October 16, 1924.^[83]
On July 4, 1925, 24-year-old Margaret Mitchell and 29-year-old John Marsh were married in the Unitarian-Universalist Church.^[84] The Marshes made their home at the Crescent Apartments in Atlanta, taking occupancy of Apt. 1, which they affectionately named "The Dump" (now the Margaret Mitchell House & Museum).^[85]

[edit] Reporter for The Atlanta Journal

While still legally married to Upshaw and needing income for herself,^[86] Mitchell got a job writing feature articles for The Atlanta Journal Sunday Magazine. She received almost no encouragement from her family or "society" to pursue a career in journalism, and had no prior newspaper experience.^[87] Medora Field Perkerson, who hired Mitchell said:

There had been some skepticism on the Atlanta Journal Magazine staff when Peggy came to work as a reporter. Debutantes slept late in those days and didn't go in for jobs.^[87]

Her first story, Atlanta Girl Sees Italian Revolution,^[88] by Margaret Mitchell Upshaw, appeared on December 31, 1922.^[89]

She wrote on a wide range of topics, from fashions to Confederate generals and King Tut.

In an article that appeared on July 1, 1923, Valentino Declares He Isn't a Sheik,^[90] she interviewed celebrity actor Rudolph Valentino, referring to him as "Sheik" from his film role.

Less thrilled by his looks than his "chief charm", his "low, husky voice with a soft, sibilant accent",^[91] she described his face as "swarthy":

His face was swarthy, so brown that his white teeth flashed in startling contrast to his skin; his eyes—tired, bored, but courteous.^[92]

Mitchell was quite thrilled when Valentino took her in his arms and carried her inside from the rooftop of the Georgian Terrace Hotel.^[93]


Many of her stories were vividly descriptive.

In an article titled, Bridesmaid of Eighty-Seven Recalls Mittie Roosevelt's Wedding,^[94] she wrote of a white-columned mansion in which lived the last surviving bridesmaid at Theodore Roosevelt's mother's wedding:

The tall white columns glimpsed through the dark green of cedar foliage, the wide veranda encircling the house, the stately silence endangered by the century-old oaks evoke memories of Thomas Nelson Page's On Virginia.

The atmosphere of dignity, ease, and courtesy that was the soul of the Old South breathes from this old mansion...^[95]

In another article, Georgia's Empress and Women Soldiers,^[96] she wrote short sketches of four notable Georgia women. One was the first woman to serve in the United States Senate, Rebecca Latimer Felton, a suffragist who held white supremacist views.

The other women were: Nancy Hart, Lucy Mathilda Kenny (also known as Private Bill Thompson of the Confederate States Army) and Mary Musgrove. The article generated mail and controversy from her readers.^[97][98] Mitchell received criticism for depicting "strong women who did not fit the accepted standards of femininity."^[99]

Mitchell's journalism career, which began in 1922, came to an end less than four years later; her last article appeared on May 9, 1926.^[83] Several months after marrying John Marsh, Mitchell quit due an ankle injury that would not heal properly and to become a full-time wife.^[43] During the time Mitchell worked for the Atlanta Journal, she wrote 129 feature articles, 85 news stories, and several book reviews.^[100]

[edit] 

Novelist

[edit]  

Early works

[edit] 

Lost Laysen

Mitchell wrote a romance novella, Lost Laysen, when she was fifteen years old (1916). She gave Lost Laysen, which she had written in two notebooks, to a boyfriend, Henry Love Angel. He died in 1945 and the novella remained undiscovered among some letters she had written to him until 1994.^[101] The novella was published in 1996, eighty years after it was written, and became a New York Times Best Seller.^[102]

In Lost Laysen, Mitchell explores the dynamics of three male characters and their relationship to the only female character, "Courtenay Ross", a strong-willed American missionary to the South Pacific island of "Laysen". The narrator of the tale is "Billy Duncan", "a rough, hardened soldier of fortune",^[103] who is frequently involved in fights that leave him near death. Courtenay quickly observes Duncan's hard-muscled body as he works shirtless aboard a ship called "Caliban". Courtenay's suitor is "Douglas Steele", an athletic man who apparently believes Courtenay is helpless without him. He follows Courtenay to Laysen to protect her from perceived foreign savages.

The third male character is the rich, powerful yet villainous "Juan Mardo". He leers at Courtenay and makes rude comments of a sexual nature, in Japanese nonetheless. Mardo provokes Duncan and Steele, and each feels he must defend Courtenay's honor. Ultimately Courtenay defends her own honor rather than submit to shame.
In a gender reversal, the woman writer (Mitchell) narrates Lost Laysen through a heroic male character, Billy Duncan.^[104] Mitchell's antagonist, Juan Mardo, lurks in the shadows of the story and has no dialogue. The reader learns of Mardo's evil intentions through Duncan:

They were saying that Juan Mardo had his eye on you—and intended to have you—any way he could get you!^[105]

Mardo's desires are similar to those of Rhett Butler in his ardent pursuit of Scarlett O'Hara in Mitchell's epic novel, Gone with the Wind. Rhett tells Scarlett:

I always intended having you, one way or another.^[106]

The "other way" is rape.

 In Lost Laysen the male seducer is replaced with the male rapist.^[104]

[edit]  

 

The Big Four

In Mitchell's teenage years, she is known to have written a 400-page novel about girls in a boarding school, The Big Four.^[107]

The novel is thought to be lost; Mitchell destroyed some of her manuscripts herself and others were destroyed after her death.^[43]

[edit] '

 

Ropa Carmagin

In the 1920s Mitchell completed a novelette, 'Ropa Carmagin, about a Southern white girl who loves a biracial man.^[43] Mitchell submitted the manuscript to Macmillan Publishers in 1935 along with her manuscript for Gone with the Wind.

The novelette was rejected; Macmillan thought the story was too short for book form.^[108]

[edit]  

 

Final work

[edit] 

 

Writing Gone with the Wind

I had every detail clear in my mind before I sat down to the typewriter.

—Margaret Mitchell^[109]

In May 1926, after Mitchell had left her job at the Atlanta Journal and was recovering at home from her ankle injury, she wrote a society column for the Sunday Magazine, "Elizabeth Bennet's Gossip", which she continued to write until August.^[100]

Meanwhile, Marsh was growing weary of lugging armloads of books home from the library to keep his wife's mind occupied while she hobbled around the house; he emphatically suggested she write her own book instead:

For God's sake, Peggy, can't you write a book instead of reading thousands of them?^[110]

To aid her in her literary endeavors, John Marsh brought home a Remington Portable No. 3 typewriter (c. 1928).^[111][85]


For the next three years Mitchell worked exclusively on writing a Civil War-era novel whose heroine was named Pansy O'Hara (prior to publication Pansy was changed to Scarlett).

 She used parts of the manuscript to prop up a wobbly couch.^[112]

[edit] 

 

World War II

The USS Atlanta (CL-51) was an anti-aircraft ship of the United States Navy sponsored by Margaret Mitchell and used in the naval Battle of Midway and the Eastern Solomons. The ship was struck and sunk in night surface action on November 13, 1942 during the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal. Mitchell sponsored a second cruiser named after the city of Atlanta, USS Atlanta (CL-104). On February 6, 1944, she christened Atlanta in Camden, New Jersey.^[113] Atlanta was operating off the coast of Honshū when the Japanese surrendered on August 15, 1945.

It was sunk during an explosive test off San Clemente Island on October 1, 1970.

[edit]  

 

 

Death

Mitchell's grave in Oakland Cemetery in Atlanta

Margaret Mitchell was struck by a speeding automobile as she crossed Peachtree Street at 13th Street in Atlanta with her husband, John Marsh, while on her way to see a movie on the evening of August 11, 1949.

 She died at Grady Hospital five days later without regaining consciousness. The driver, Hugh Gravitt, was an off-duty taxi driver who was driving his personal vehicle when he struck Mitchell.

After the accident, Gravitt was arrested for drunken driving and released on a $5,450 bond until Mitchell's death.

It was discovered that he had been cited 23 times previously for traffic violations. The Governor of Georgia, Herman Talmadge, later announced that the state would tighten regulations for licensing taxi drivers.^[114] Gravitt was convicted of involuntary manslaughter and served four months in jail.^[115]

[edit]  

 

Legacy

Perhaps the most enduring legacy of Mitchell's Gone with the Wind is that people worldwide would think it was the "true story" of the Old South and how it was changed by the American Civil War and Reconstruction. The film version of the novel "amplified this effect".^[116]

[edit] 

 

References

1. ^ "5 Honors Awarded on the Year's Books: ...", The New York Times, Feb 26, 1937, page 23. ProQuest Historical Newspapers The New York Times (1851–2007).
2. ^ ^{a b} Chandler, Allen D., and Clement A. Evans. Cyclopedia of Georgia. Atlanta, GA: State Historical Association, 1906. Vol 2 of 3, p. 602-605. OCLC 3300148
3. ^ ^{a b c} Johnson, Joan Marie. Southern Women at the Seven Sister Colleges: feminist values and social activism 1875–1915. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2008. p. 13. ISBN 978-0-8203-3095-2
4. ^ Garrett, Franklin M. Atlanta and Environs: a chronicle of its people and events. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1969. Vol. 1, p. 819. ISBN 0-8203-0263-5
5. ^ ^{a b} Ruppersburg, Hugh. The New Georgia Encyclopedia Companion to Georgia Literature. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2007. p. 326. ISBN 978-0-8203-2876-8
6. ^ Historical Jonesboro/Clayton County Inc. Jonesboro-Historical Jonesboro. Mount Pleasant, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2007. p. 8. ISBN 0-7385-4355-1
7. ^ Reed, Wallace Putnam. History of Atlanta, Georgia: with illustrations and biographical sketches of some of its prominent men and pioneers. Syracuse, NY: D. Mason & Co, 1889. p. 563. OCLC 12564880
8. ^ The Chi Phi Chakett: Graduate Personals. January 1893, Vol. V, p. 135.
9. ^ ^{a b c} Bartley, Numen V. The Evolution of Southern Culture, Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1988. p. 89. ISBN 0-8203-0993-1
10. ^ ^{a b} Hobson, Fred C. South to the future: an American region in the twenty-first century. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2002. p. 19. ISBN 0-8203-2411-6
11. ^ Hobson, Fred C. South to the future: an American region in the twenty-first century, p. 21.
12. ^ Williford, William Bailey. Peachtree Street, Atlanta. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1962. p. 122-123. ISBN 978-0-8203-3477-6
13. ^ Mitchell, Margaret and Jane Eskridge. Before Scarlett: girlhood writings of Margaret Mitchell. Athens, GA: Hill Street Press, 2000. p. xxiii. ISBN 978-1-892514-62-2
14. ^ Brooks, Victoria. Literary Trips: following in the footsteps of fame, Volume 1. Vancouver: Great Escapes Publishing, 2000. p. 155. ISBN 0-9686137-0-5
15. ^ Radio interview with Medora Perkerson on radio station WSB in Atlanta on July 3, 1936 Retrieved June 9, 2012.
16. ^ ^{a b} Jones, Anne Goodwyn. Tomorrow is Another Day: the woman writer in the South 1859–1936. Baton Rouge, LA: University of Louisiana Press, 1981. p. 322. ISBN 0-8071-0776-X
17. ^ Jones, A. G., Tomorrow is Another Day: the woman writer in the South, 1859–1936, p. 323.
18. ^ Jones, A. G., Tomorrow is Another Day: the woman writer in the South, 1859–1936, p. 324.
19. ^ Cassuto, Leonard, Claire Virginia Eby and Benjamin Reiss. The Cambridge History of the American Novel. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2011. p. 236. ISBN 978-0-521-89907-9
20. ^ ^{a b c d} Felder, Deborah G. A Century of Women: the most influential events in twentieth-century women's history. New York, NY: Citadel Press, 1999. p. 158. ISBN 0-8065-2526-6
21. ^ Caudill, Edward and Paul Ashdown. Sherman's March in Myth and Memory. Lanaham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2008. p. 179. ISBN 978-0-7425-5027-8
22. ^ Martin, Sara Hines. More Than Petticoats: remarkable Georgia women. Guilford, CT: The Global Pequot Press, 2003. p. 161. ISBN 0-7627-1270-8
23. ^ Historical Jonesboro/Clayton County, Inc., Jonesboro-Historical Jonesboro, p. 113.
24. ^ Fayetteville City Cemetery. Retrieved December 20, 2011.
25. ^ Jones, A. G., Tomorrow is Another Day: the woman writer in the South 1859–1936, p. 321.
26. ^ Brown, Ellen F., and John Wiley. Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind: a bestseller's odyssey from Atlanta to Hollywood. Lanham, MD: Taylor Trade Publishing, 2011. p. 5-6. ISBN 978-1-58979-567-9
27. ^ Gardner, Sarah E. Blood and Irony: Southern white women's narratives of the Civil War, 1861–1937. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2004. p. 241. ISBN 0-8078-2818-1
28. ^ Cooper, Frederic Tabor. "The Theory of Endings and Some Recent Novels." The Bookman, November 1912, Vol. XXXVI: p. 439.
29. ^ ^{a b} Champion, Laurie. American Women Writers, 1900–1945: a bio-bibliographical critical sourcebook. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2000. p. 240. ISBN 0-313-30943-4
30. ^ ^{a b} Walker, Marianne. Margaret Mitchell and John Marsh: the love story behind Gone With the Wind. Atlanta, GA: Peachtree Publishers, 1993. p. 32. ISBN 978-1-56145-617-8
31. ^ Mitchell, M., et al., Before Scarlett: girlhood writings of Margaret Mitchell, p. x, 14–15.
32. ^ Mitchell, M., et al., Before Scarlett: girlhood writings of Margaret Mitchell, p. 16-17 & 19–33.
33. ^ Mitchell, M., et al., Before Scarlett: girlhood writings of Margaret Mitchell, p. 9 & 106–112.
34. ^ Mitchell, Margaret and Debra Freer. Lost Laysen. New York, NY: Scribner, 1996. p. 7. ISBN 0-684-82428-0
35. ^ Mitchell, Margaret. Gone with the Wind. New York: Scribner, 1936. ISBN 978-1-4165-7346-3
36. ^ Mitchell, M., et al., Before Scarlett: girlhood writings of Margaret Mitchell, p. 185-199.
37. ^ Mitchell, M., et al., Before Scarlett: girlhood writings of Margaret Mitchell, p. 47.
38. ^ Sargent, Porter E. A Handbook of the Best Private Schools of the United States and Canada. Boston: P.E Sargent, 1915. Vol. 1, p. 150.
39. ^ Johnson, J.M., Southern Women at the Seven Sister Colleges: feminist values and social activism, 1875–1915, p. 49.
40. ^ Bartley, N.V., The Evolution of Southern Culture, p. 94.
41. ^ Mitchell, M., et al., Before Scarlett: girlhood writings of Margaret Mitchell, p. 138.
42. ^ Mitchell, M., et al., Before Scarlett: girlhood writings of Margaret Mitchell, p. 163 and 207.
43. ^ ^{a b c d} Jones, A. G., Tomorrow is Another Day: the woman writer in the South, 1859–1936, p. 314.
44. ^ Mitchell, M., et al., Before Scarlett: girlhood writings of Margaret Mitchell, p. 204.
45. ^ Edwards, Anne. Road to Tara: The Life of Margaret Mitchell. New Haven: Tichnor and Fields, 1983. Photo section between p. 178-179. ISBN 0-89919-169-X
46. ^ Pyron, Darden Asbury. Southern Daughter: the life of Margaret Mitchell. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991. p. 84. ISBN 978-0-19-505276-3
47. ^ Dixon, Jr., Thomas. The Traitor: a story of the fall of the invisible empire. New York: Doubleday, Page & Co, 1907. OCLC 2410927
48. ^ Summary of The Traitor: A Story of the Fall of the Invisible Empire . Retrieved July 22, 2012.
49. ^ Bartley, N.V., The Evolution of Southern Culture, p. 93.
50. ^ Slide, Anothony. American Racist: the life and films of Thomas Dixon, Lexington, KY: The University Press of Kentucky, 2004. p.192. ISBN 0-8131-2328-3
51. ^ Mitchell, M., et al., Lost Laysen, p. 14-15.
52. ^ Mitchell, M., et al., Before Scarlett: girlhood writings of Margaret Mitchell, p. 131-132.
53. ^ Slide, A., American Racist: the life and films of Thomas Dixon, p. 170.
54. ^ Dixon, Jr., Thomas. The Black Hood. New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1924. OCLC 1049244
55. ^ Mead, Frederick Sumner. Harvard's Military Record in the World War, Boston, MA: The Harvard Alumni Association, 1921. p. 669. OCLC 1191594
56. ^ Pyron, D. A., Southern Daughter: the life of Margaret Mitchell, p. 106.
57. ^ Johnson, J.M., Southern Women at the Seven Sister Colleges: feminist values and social activism, 1875–1915, p. 13-14.
58. ^ Walker, M., Margaret Mitchell and John Marsh: the love story behind Gone With the Wind, p. 33.
59. ^ ^{a b c} Mead, F.S., Harvard's Military Record in the World War, p. 450.
60. ^ Edwards, A., Road to Tara: The Life of Margaret Mitchell, p. 47 & 54.
61. ^ Mitchell, Margaret, Allen Barnett Edee and Jane Bonner Peacock. A Dynamo Going to Waste: Letters to Allen Edee, 1919–1921. Atlanta, GA: Peachtree Publishers, Ltd, 1985. p. 76-77. ISBN 978-0-931948-70-1
62. ^ Edwards, A., Road to Tara: The Life of Margaret Mitchell, p. 48.
63. ^ Clifford W. Henry (1896-1918) Retrieved August 27, 2012.
64. ^ Harvard Alumni Association, Harvard Alumni Bulletin, May 8, 1919, Vol. 21, No. 31, p. 645.
65. ^ Harvard Alumni Association, Harvard Alumni Bulletin, April 10, 1919, Vol. 21, No. 27, p. 539.
66. ^ Valor awards for Clifford West Henry Retrieved January 20, 2012.
67. ^ ^{a b c} Pierpont, Claudia Roth. "A Critic at Large: A Study in Scarlett." The New Yorker, August 31, 1992, p. 93-94.
68. ^ Maybelle Mitchell (1872–1919) Retrieved December 1, 2011.
69. ^ Edwards, A., Road to Tara: The Life of Margaret Mitchell, p. 56 & 60.
70. ^ Mitchell, M., et al., A Dynamo Going to Waste: Letters to Allen Edee, 1919–1921, p. 30 & 42.
71. ^ Flora, Joseph M., Amber Vogel and Bryan Albin Giemza. Southern Writers: a new biographical dictionary Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 2006. p. 285. ISBN 0-8071-3123-7
72. ^ ^{a b} Mitchell, Margaret and Patrick Allen. Margaret Mitchell: reporter. Athens, GA: Hill Street Press, 2000. p. xix. ISBN 978-1-57003-937-9
73. ^ ^{a b} Wolfe, Margaret Ripley. Daughters of Canaan: a saga of southern women. Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 1995. p. 150. ISBN 0-8131-0837-3
74. ^ Young, Elizabeth. Disarming the Nation: women's writing and the American Civil War. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1999. p. 243. ISBN 0-226-96087-0
75. ^ Groppa, Carlos G. The Tango in the United States: a history. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co. Publishers, 2004. p. 82. ISBN 0-7864-1406-5
76. ^ Leider, Emily W. Dark Lover: the life and death of Rudolph Valentino. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003. p. 39-40. ISBN 0-374-28239-0
77. ^ Mitchell, M., et al, A Dynamo Going to Waste: Letters to Allen Edee, 1919–1921, p. 116-118.
78. ^ ^{a b} Bartley, N.V., The Evolution of Southern Culture, p. 95-96.
79. ^ Walker, M. Margaret Mitchell and John Marsh: the love story behind Gone With the Wind. p. 37 & 80.
80. ^ Mitchell, M., et al., Lost Laysen, p. 16.
81. ^ Bartley, N.V., The Evolution of Southern Culture, p. 95.
82. ^ Mitchell, M., et al, A Dynamo Going to Waste: Letters to Allen Edee, 1919–1921, p. 133.
83. ^ ^{a b} Mitchell, M., et al., Margaret Mitchell: reporter, p. xx.
84. ^ Walker, M., Margaret Mitchell and John Marsh: the love story behind Gone With the Wind, p. 125.
85. ^ ^{a b} Brown, E.F., et al., Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind: a bestseller's odyssey from Atlanta to Hollywood, p. 8.
86. ^ Edwards, A., Road to Tara: The Life of Margaret Mitchell, p. 91.
87. ^ ^{a b} Wolfe, M.R., Daughters of Canaan: a saga of southern women, p. 149.
88. ^ Mitchell, M., et al., Margaret Mitchell: reporter, p. 3-5.
89. ^ Mitchell, M., et al., Margaret Mitchell: reporter, p. xi.
90. ^ Mitchell, M., et al., Margaret Mitchell: reporter, p. 152-154.
91. ^ Mitchell, M., et al., Margaret Mitchell: reporter, p. 153.
92. ^ Mitchell, M., et al., Margaret Mitchell: reporter, p. 152.
93. ^ Mitchell, M., et al., Margaret Mitchell: reporter, p. 154.
94. ^ Mitchell, M., et al., Margaret Mitchell: reporter, p. 144-151.
95. ^ Mitchell, M., et al., Margaret Mitchell: reporter, p. 144.
96. ^ Mitchell, M., et al., Margaret Mitchell: reporter, p. 238-245.
97. ^ Bartley, N.V., The Evolution of Southern Culture, p. 96.
98. ^ Mitchell, M., et al., Margaret Mitchell: reporter, p. xiii.
99. ^ Felder, Deborah G. A bookshelf of Our Own: works that changed women's lives. New York, NY: Citadel Press, 2006. p. 108. ISBN 978-0-8065-2742-0
100. ^ ^{a b} Mitchell, M., et al., Margaret Mitchell: reporter, p. xv.
101. ^ Mitchell, M., et al., Lost Laysen, p. 7-8.
102. ^ BEST SELLERS: June 2, 1996. Retrieved August 27, 2012.
103. ^ Mitchell, M., et al., Lost Laysen, p. 97.
104. ^ ^{a b} Young, E., Disarming the Nation: women's writing and the American Civil War, p. 241.
105. ^ Mitchell, M., et al., Lost Laysen, p. 99.
106. ^ Mitchell, M., Gone with the Wind, Part 4, chapter 47.
107. ^ Mitchell, M., et al., Before Scarlett: girlhood writings of Margaret Mitchell, p. xxii.
108. ^ Brown, E.F., et al., Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind: a bestseller's odyssey from Atlanta to Hollywood, p. 27.
109. ^ Brown, E.F., et al., Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind: a bestseller's odyssey from Atlanta to Hollywood, p. 9.
110. ^ Oliphant, Sgt. H. N. "People on the Home Front: Margaret Mitchell". October 19, 1945. Yank, p. 9.
111. ^ Remington Portable No. 3. Retrieved August 27, 2012.
112. ^ Williamson, Joel. William Faulkner and Southern History. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. p. 244-245. ISBN 0-19-507404-1
113. ^ Photo Mitchell Christens USS Atlanta. Retrieved August 27, 2012.
114. ^ Obituary: Miss Mitchell, 49, Dead of Injuries, (August 17, 1949) New York Times. Retrieved May 14, 2011.
115. ^ Martin, Harold H. Atlanta and Environs: a chronicle of its people and events. Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press, 1987. Vol. 3, p. 153-154. ISBN 0-8203-0913-3
116. ^ Williamson, J., William Faulkner and Southern History, p. 245.

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Further reading

Biography portal

• Bonner, Peter. "Lost In Yesterday: Commemorating The 70th Anniversary of Margaret Mitchell's 'Gone With The Wind' ". Marietta, Georgia: First Works Publishing Co., Inc., 2006. ISBN 978-0-9716158-9-2.
• Brown, Ellen F. and John Wiley. Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind: A Bestseller's Odyssey from Atlanta to Hollywood. Lanham, Maryland: Taylor Trade, 2011. ISBN 978-1-58979-567-9.
• Edwards, Anne. Road to Tara: The Life of Margaret Mitchell. New Haven: Tichnor and Fields, 1983. ISBN 0-89919-169-X
• Farr, Finnis. Margaret Mitchell of Atlanta: The Author of Gone With the Wind. New York: William Morrow, 1965. ISBN 978-0-380-00810-0
• Mitchell, Margaret, Allen Barnett Edee and Jane Bonner Peacock. A Dynamo Going to Waste: Letters to Allen Edee, 1919–1921. Atlanta, Georgia: Peachtree Publishers, Ltd, 1985. ISBN 978-0-931948-70-1
• Mitchell, Margaret and Patrick Allen. Margaret Mitchell: Reporter. Athens, Georgia: Hill Street Press, 2000. ISBN 978-1-57003-937-9
• Mitchell, Margaret and Jane Eskridge. Before Scarlett: Girlhood Writings of Margaret Mitchell. Athens, Georgia: Hill Street Press, 2000. ISBN 978-1-892514-62-2
• Pyron, Darden Asbury. Southern Daughter: The Life of Margaret Mitchell. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991. ISBN 978-0-19-505276-3
• Walker, Marianne. Margaret Mitchell & John Marsh: The Love Story Behind Gone With the Wind. Atlanta: Peachtree, 1993. ISBN 978-1-56145-231-6

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External links

• Margaret Mitchell at Find a Grave

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Margaret Mitchell

• New Georgia Encyclopedia